News

What does Jane Goodall’s early scientific career look like on paper? Grant reports typed by candlelight. Thank-you notes for $10 donations. Balancing fieldwork with motherhood. Volunteer Alex Wilkins processed The Leakey Foundation’s Jane Goodall archive and came away with a different kind of reverence for her scientific hero.

Biruté Galdikas did not simply study orangutans; she dedicated her life to revealing their behavior and ecology, protecting their future, and ensuring they would never again be forgotten.

Eva Stela Nomenjanahary grew up in Madagascar, one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth. Now a PhD student, she’s recording rare nocturnal lemur calls to understand how they change as habitat becomes fragmented.

Sims Patton didn’t set out to become a primatologist. She started college aiming for veterinary school, but an internship at Riverbanks Zoo and Gardens, where she worked with a gorilla who had been raised as a pet, changed her direction entirely.

Follow Leakey Foundation grantees Sims Patton and Abigail McClain through a day in the field as they study chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, Tanzania.

A new study of a pair of 13-million-year-old fossil jaws sheds new light on how howler monkeys became one of South America’s most successful primates.

Alexandra Kralick’s research connects skeletal biology with behavior, helping us understand sex-linked variation in primates.

​​Penina Kadalida is a Leakey Foundation Baldwin Fellow whose research will help us better understand the biology of aging and how evolutionary history still shapes our lives today.

A recent study from the Issa Valley in western Tanzania highlights a surprising, and potentially crucial, role for fungi in primate diets.

Does terrain shape chimpanzee social behavior? Primatologist Maggie Hoffman is finding out by studying wild chimps across three East African field sites.